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On the Nature of Transitions: the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Revolution

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On the Nature of Transitions: the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Revolution On the Nature of Transitions: the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Revolution The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Bar-Yosef, Ofer. 1998. “On the Nature of Transitions: The Middle to Upper Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Revolution.” Cam. Arch. Jnl 8 (02) (October): 141. Published Version doi:10.1017/S0959774300000986 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:12211496 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Cambridge Archaeological Journal 8:2 (1998), 141-63 On the Nature of Transitions: the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Revolution Ofer Bar-Yosef This article discusses two major revolutions in the history of humankind, namely, the Neolithic and the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic revolutions. The course of the first one is used as a general analogy to study the second, and the older one. This approach puts aside the issue of biological differences among the human fossils, and concentrates solely on the cultural and technological innovations. It also demonstrates that issues that are common- place to the study of the trajisition from foraging to cultivation and animal husbandry can be employed as an overarching model for the study of the transition from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic. The advantage of this approach is that it focuses on the core areas where each of these revolutions began, the ensuing dispersals and their geographic contexts. Revolutions occur from time to time during the can be made on the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic evolution of humankind. Although scholars disa- revolution. In my view, what has hampered a better gree on the number of recognizable major cultural understanding of this earlier revolution is the fact changes that merit the label 'revolution', there is that most scholars have presented their hypotheses hardly any doubt that both the transition from the from a West European perspective. It would be ad- Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic and the transition vantageous to look at the same problem from a Near from foraging to agriculture should be included. Eastern viewpoint, without of course endorsing the Several years ago I suggested that the models automatic assumption of ex oriente lux. available for the agricultural or Neolithic revolution For the purpose of clarity I will move through might assist us in building models and seeking in- time from the recent to the more remote past. After formation about the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic all, one can only excavate a site from the recent revolution (Bar-Yosef 1992; 1994). Current knowl- surface to the bedrock and not the other way around. edge of the processes involved in the Neolithic Revo- Adopting such a trajectory is not much different lution brings major advantages when we examine from the way we build our models: by using analo- other dramatic changes which occurred some 50,000 gies derived from the recent historical past, from to 40,000 years earlier. First, the Neolithic Revolu- fields such as ethnohistory and ethnoarchaeology, tion was the achievement of a single human species, and by testing our assumptions through actualistic namely our own Homo sapiens. Second, archaeologi- studies, we try to overcome the epistemological ob- cal knowledge of this revolution indicates a direct stacles. relationship between the Near East and Europe. The discipline of archaeology is used to recon- Third, the large body of data on the transition to struct cultural history or to test functional- agriculture, collected from a single well-defined geo- adaptational models. Archaeologists employ or graphic region, clearly demonstrates temporal and borrow from the research methods and results of spatial trajectories. other disciplines in order to make sense of our finds As with the agricultural revolution, several gen- in the field and in the laboratory. Thus knowledge of eralizations concerning relatively rapid cultural social behaviour is derived from the works of social changes and long-range movements of populations anthropologists, sociologists, and primatologists. 141 Ofer Bar-Yosef Bioanthropologists, whether concerned with fossils In historical studies one can trace and date the or living populations, provide us with the essential generation when such a revolution began. For in- building blocks for reconstructing past demographies stance, historical documents and archaeological re- and phylogenetic relationships. Linguists and brain mains reveal exactly when and where the Industrial scientists produce information and models concern- Revolution in eighteenth-century England took place, ing language development and cognition. Geneti- how quickly technical inventions were transported cists and linguists challenge our interpretations of to other regions, when and how social changes oc- past societies, migrations, and boundaries between curred, etc. (e.g. Landes 1969; Hartwell 1971; Wolf social entities. Other scientists supply information 1982; Braudel 1987). Finding an overall agreement on the preservation of archaeological remains, the among historians and anthropologists concerning the sourcing of materials, site formation processes, past 'why' question is more difficult (e.g. see papers in climates, vegetations and faunas. Radiometric dates O'Brien & Quinault 1993). The lesson from the in- are certainly produced from samples we may collect vestigation of the recent past is that the 'when' and ourselves, but only by specialists who work in dif- 'where' are relatively easy to identify and date, but ferent laboratories. It is indeed becoming virtually 'why' answers remain elusive and open to constant impossible to integrate the variable archaeological re-interpretations. data sets into a coherent picture without working It is somewhat difficult to figure out the when closely with a large group of other scholars. The and where of a prehistoric cultural transition such as days of the pioneer archaeologist, the individual with the Neolithic Revolution. Here the time scale is based total reponsibility for the entire archaeological op- on radiocarbon dates, with their stated margins of eration, are gone. error, rather than historical data. Furthermore, even The ultimate goal of such all-encompassing ar- with the new calibration curves, we still cannot ex- chaeological projects is to tell some particular story pect to achieve greater accuracy in dating than within about why, where, and when human societies a few centuries (e.g. Evin 1995; however, note that changed. In the process we look for answers to ques- all the dates in this paper are uncalibrated DP). tions such as how and why societies differed from For the purpose of the following discussion I each other in their structure and organization, sub- have borrowed the notions of core and periphery sistence strategies, perception of the landscape, and from the Industrial Revolution (as already elsewhere; cultural constructs such as cosmology and /or reli- see Bar-Yosef & Belfer-Cohen 1989a). These terms gion. It is no less important to find out why certain will be used only in the geographical sense with people and their cultural patterns survived through reference to rudimentary socio-economic variables good and bad times while others vanished. History such as subsistence strategy, time and energy budg- is littered with stories of winners and losers, and the ets, level of female fertility, social entities and so changes brought about by the two revolutions con- forth. There were also peripheries within the core sidered here exemplify this fate. area during the Industrial Revolution, which meant that inventions and innovations as well as power Prehistoric revolutions and richness were not evenly distributed through- out an expansive region but were more locally con- Past revolutions are always evaluated on the basis of centrated. As I will briefly show below, this model is their outcome. Gradualists see even the most dra- useful in examining the Neolithic Revolution in matic cultural and socio-economic transition as a Southwest Asia. slow process that took hundreds or even thousands of years to be completed. In contrast, those who Introduction to the agricultural revolution view the change as radical and rapid try to find out when and where it began. The successful comple- The Fertile Crescent in the Near East, or more appro- tion of the first phase of a crucial transition culmi- priately southwest Asia, is one of the two oldest nates in the reaching of 'a point of no return'. Once centres of agricultural revolution in the Old World the major catalytic change or changes occur, a new (the other being the middle Yangzi River in China, socio-economic system emerges. Hence, even if the cf. Smith 1995; Fig. 1). Archaeological evidence, in- results became clear in the material world only a cluding botanical determinations of carbonized plant century or more later, this process is still considered remains, is rapidly accumulating (e.g. Harris & a 'revolution'. This is the position employed in the Hillman 1989; Hillman 1996; Kislev 1997). There is following pages. little doubt today that systematic cultivation of 142 On the Nature of Transitions o dak del Figure 1. The centres of early agriculture in the Old World and possible routes of dispersals. cereals
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